Athens Still Looking for Legacy Year After Games

The athletes have gone. The spectators have gone. Even the sheep have gone.

It’s eerily quiet at the Olympic judo and wrestling arena, dominating a run-down zone of shacks and straggly olive groves. The area, where sheep and stray dogs occasionally roamed, has seen little activity since the end of the 2004 Athens Games.

As for many Olympic facilities, time has stood uncomfortably still for this world-class facility 12 miles north of the Greek capital.

One year ago, Athens had just pulled off a frantic race to finish Olympic venues. Now Greece is racing to find a use for them.

The opening ceremony on Aug. 13, 2004, was followed by an unexpectedly flawless Olympics -- “unforgettable, dream Games” as IOC president Jacques Rogge called them. But the spotlight is now on the post-Olympic legacy: how host cities benefit -- or not -- from staging the world’s biggest sporting event.

Athens is still enjoying its new transit network and has attracted a modest handful of international sports competitions. The government is still awaiting evidence to support predictions the Games will help boost tourism by more than 5 percent this summer.

Most venues, however, remain empty. And Greece is still tallying up the crippling Olympic bill, which one government official says is expected to reach $16 billion.

Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyiannis argues the benefits aren’t always tangible immediately.

“Athens has changed,” she said. “Probably the biggest legacy of all is the self-confidence of the Athenians themselves, the pride in their city.”

Host cities, she argues, “need time to adapt” to their post-Olympic celebrity. “It’s not easy because you can’t keep all these facilities for Olympic events. You find ways for them to be kept [for the public].”

The fate of the venues even worries government supporters.

“A huge national treasure of infrastructure and good impressions remains unexploited on the first anniversary of the Games and might be permanently lost,” the conservative daily Kathimerini commented on Aug. 7.

Government officials insist the state will retain ownership of all sites and not burden taxpayers with the bill.

Venue maintenance costs $120 million a year, though some money has been raised through creative uses. The International Broadcasting Center hosted a motorcycle exhibition and the badminton complex staged the musical “Cats.”

Athens’ main Olympic Stadium, now home to two major Greek soccer clubs, was used for a stage of the Acropolis Rally, and in June hosted the track meet where Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell set a 100-meter world record of 9.77 seconds.

The Olympic Stadium will host track and field’s World Cup next year and the Champions League soccer final in 2007. Athens is also bidding to stage the 2012 European soccer championship.

Greece had initially planned to spend $5.5 billion on the Olympics, but the figure soared as preparations were dogged by delays, and fears of a terrorist attack grew. Security alone cost Athens $1.4 billion.

The Athens organizing committee actually posted a surplus of $166.79 million, but its budget only covered the operating expenses of the Games and not the massive infrastructure costs.

Rogge said deciding whether the expense was worth it is up to the people of Greece.

“This is something on which the Greeks have to comment themselves because they are spending it themselves,” he said. “That there is a great legacy, there is no doubt. Was it at the best price? It is up to you, the Greeks, to make that decision.”

Meanwhile, there haven’t been any horses at the equestrian cross-country venue since the end of the Games. The course remains in pristine condition, with the Olympic rings still nailed on one of the jumps.

Nikos Charalambides, a spokesman for the environmental group Greenpeace, said grandiose plans for the rowing site at Schinias have failed to materialize. The government promised “organic farming in the vicinity and transformation of the wetlands.” Instead, he said, “four guards sit and drink coffee.”

Greece has issued a first wave of tenders to lease the badminton arena, the IBC and canoe and kayak facility, with other tenders planned. Venues could be turned into hotels, conference centers, coffee shops and golf courses.

“We believe the time has come to capitalize on this great heritage of the Olympics,” Deputy Culture Minister Fani Palli-Petralia said, contending the Games had already made Greece “an international center of culture and sport.”

Greece’s main opposition Socialist party, which lost power five months before the Olympics, has accused the conservatives of wasting valuable time.

“Never has a government shown such incompetence in failing to benefit a country from the biggest sporting, cultural and media event on the planet,” the Socialists charged in a statement.